


Aftermath

by greenapricot



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-06-29 22:16:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19839619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenapricot/pseuds/greenapricot
Summary: Robbie wakes to a steady beeping in a bed that’s not his own. He feels like he’s been hit by a lorry.Wait. He was.Or near enough, if it weren’t for James.James.





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something that appeared almost funny formed in my head one morning. (This is not the fic I've been talking about on tumblr, that one is still in the works and looking to be much longer than this.)

Robbie wakes to a steady beeping in a bed that’s not his own. He feels like he’s been hit by a lorry. 

Wait. He was. 

Or near enough, if it weren’t for James. 

James. 

His neck protests as Robbie turns his head. James is there, in another bed closer to the door, a bandage wrapped around his head. He is pale and unnaturally still. The beeping is a heart monitor, two heart monitors; constant, steady. James’ heart. Robbie’s heart. Robbie watches for long minutes, looking for movement beyond the rise and fall of James’ chest beneath the sheet and blanket tucked in around him. Not a twitch. Robbie grits his teeth against the pain in his neck when he turns his head away again. 

The sky is a uniform grey out the window, low clouds of the sort that mask the time of day even if one hasn’t woken up in hospital. Good. Grey is the right colour for the sky with James lying there like that, not even the usual agitated twitching of his fingers in evidence. Robbie matches his breath to the rhythm of James’ and drifts off to sleep. 

When he wakes again the widow is night-dark and Lyn is there. Robbie doesn’t register her at first, his eyes seeking James as soon as they open. James is still too pale in the other bed. He doesn’t seem to have moved, the blanket tucked smoothly in around him. James has spent enough nights on Robbie’s sofa for Robbie to know that James is never still, even in sleep. More often than not Robbie walks through the living room of a morning to find the blankets twisted around James’ legs, his long limbs sprawled half off the sofa or curled up smaller than someone as tall as him ought to be able to. That James hasn’t moved at all for what must have been hours can’t be good.

Robbie looks away, looks at the ceiling, the window, waiting for the sting at the corners of his eyes to dissipate before he looks at Lyn. But she’s seen it anyway. He’s too drugged up on whatever painkillers the IV is feeding him to hide it. He can see in the way Lyn looks at him that she knows how he feels about James. Before James knows. James may never know if he doesn’t wake up. Robbie glances over at him again, out of reach in the other bed, out of reach in his own head.

“Dad,” Lyn says, reaching for his hand. “James is going to be all right. They’ve got him sedated right now. Once the swelling’s gone down they’ll reduce the dose and he’ll wake up.”

Robbie nods, a lump in his throat. 

“I talked to the nurses,” she says.

Robbie nods again and squeezes her hand. “Thanks, pet.”

She squeezes back, giving him a knowing look. “Get some rest, okay? We’ll talk later.”

“Okay,” Robbie says. Lyn squeezes his hand again and kisses him on the forehead as she leaves. 

His daughter who is the best of him, the best of Val, has rumbled him being in love with his sergeant and not made a big thing of it. That talk they’ll have later will be about making sure this is what he wants, and he does. Oh, he does. It aches in his chest and prickles at the corners of his eyes how much he wants James to wake up so he can say out loud what he should have said years ago. So he can wipe the gobsmacked look James will give him off his face with a kiss. 

The way James had looked up at him from the pavement, Robbie kneeling over him, ignoring the pain in his own shoulders and back because James had tackled Robbie out of the way of a bloody lorry and there he was on the ground and there was blood. Blood on the pavement, blood staining James’ blond hair, blood on Robbie’s fingers as he cradled James’ head in his hands. James’ face had been awash with adoration, as if he wasn’t in pain at all, as if Robbie was something worth sacrificing himself for. Their eyes met and Robbie had known like he always should have known that James felt the same. 

He hadn’t been able to reorganise his head around the new information fast enough to get the words out before James’ eyes rolled back in his head, leaving Robbie utterly terrified and shouting for help.

So, James has to wake up. He has to. Lyn says James will wake up. He should trust his daughter. He does trust his daughter, as much as he trusts his sergeant who he has so far trusted with everything except his true feelings. He only needs to wait and James will wake up. 

Robbie focuses on the steady almost synchronised beeping of their heart monitors until it begins to lull him off to sleep. His heart, which he would give to James. Which he had given to James years ago in secret without realising James would give his in return.

The next time Robbie wakes there’s only one beep. He turns his head knowing what he’s going to find and all the same willing it not to be true. James’ bed is empty. More still and silent and pale and terrible than it was with James lying motionless in it. 

“James,” Robbie says, as if he could be on the floor on the far side of the bed. As if the bed made up all neatly like that, like no one had ever been in it, isn’t a sign of the worst. 

“James,” he says again, useless, louder, and he’s pulling himself upright, wrenching his arms away from the wires, the machines and his insides rattling. The single, slow, steady beep becomes a cacophony as he gets himself free of the bed and the sheets tangled around his waist. The IV tugs at his wrist and he yanks it free. The beeping crescendos and he’s around the other side of his too-small hospital bed, and then around the other side of James’. James who is not there on the floor. James who is not there and all. Grief hits him so hard Robbie crumples to the floor. 

He doesn’t hear the nurses rushing in, he doesn’t hear them calling his name until there is a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t hear them telling him that James is fine, that James is awake, that they’ve only taken him for some tests, until there’s a gurney being rolled into the room. Robbie looks up through watery terror and James is smiling at him. 

“James,” Robbie gasps. 

“Robbie,” James says. Robbie, not sir. And they are reaching for each other, Robbie still crouched on the floor, reaching up, hands grasping at air until the nurse pushes James’ gurney closer. 

James’ hand is warm and slightly clammy and alive and the most beautiful thing Robbie has ever touched. 

All the words Robbie wants to say crowd his throat and he can’t push even one of them out. “I— James— I—” 

“Me too,” James says, squeezing Robbie’s hand, looking at him with such undisguised affection it takes his breath away. “Me too.”

And that’s enough for now. Robbie can say it properly when they get out of here, when there aren’t nurses looking on indulgently and his daughter now standing in the doorway, a crease of worry on her forehead and a smile on her lips. 

He lets James’ hand go with one last squeeze, lets them wheel James to his bed and get him settled in. Lets them help him back into his own bed and he’s suddenly exhausted; hollowed out by adrenaline and fear and filled up again with joy. Exhausted enough that the hospital bed feels comfortable as the nurse hooks him back up to the machines. 

“James,” he says, when they’re finally alone in the room together. James turns his head on the pillow, he is less pale, the bandage is smaller. He is smiling, his eyes shining. 

“Robbie,” James says, his voice hoarse with emotion or disuse.

Robbie realises he doesn’t even know how long they’ve been in hospital. His conviction to wait until they’re home to say it out loud drains out of him. 

“I love you,” Robbie says across the space between their beds.

James’ smile widens. “I love you too.”

______


End file.
